Science and Technology Mailing List Archive

["Alastair Bradstock" <<address removed>>]

I would like to comment on a different type of 'stalled' extension service.

The Department of Agriculture in South Africa's Northern Cape province finds 
itself in an enviable but rather peculiar position compared to many other SSA 
countries. The department is relatively rich and indeed during my four years in 
the province it only ever managed to spend about 60 per cent 
of its annual budget. In spite of these resources, it was unable to provide any 
sort of effective technical agricultural and organisational support to groups 
that had benefited from the government's land reform programme. 

The key problem was that the department had not developed a methodology that 
structured the way in which it delivered its wide range of technical services. 
Thus the little support that extension officers gave was ad hoc, reactive and 
largely ineffective. Thus the extension service was also 
'stalled'. The NGO FARM-Africa has been working with departmental staff to 
develop such a methodology.

If extension services in other countries are successful in securing long-term 
sustainable funding what are chance that they will experience the South African 
sy
ndrome and still be unable to deliver an effective service for farmers. If this 
is the case might DFID funds be well spent on supporting the development of 
methodologies that help provide a more structured way of delivering extension 
inputs?

Alastair Bradstock


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